—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Maggie Trowe, Editor

 

Locked-out Indiana Honeywell workers rally, gain support

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Members of United Auto Workers Local 9, locked out by Honeywell since May 9, rallied at the gate of the company’s aerospace plant here Oct. 5. They were joined by contingents of Teamsters, union teachers, and Steelworkers from Danville, Illinois, and from the ArcelorMittal steel mill in East Chicago.

“It’s great to have all of the union and community support here,” Bryan Rodgers, Local 9 recording secretary, told the crowd of 200. “We’re continuing to explain this is a not a strike, it’s a lockout. Instead of trying to work it out, they just locked us out.”

In 1936 this plant, then owned by Bendix, was the site of the first sit-down strike in the United States, several speakers said.

The plant makes airplane brakes and wheels for Boeing, Airbus and other aerospace giants. Honeywell also locked out 41 UAW Local 1508 members at its Green Island, New York, brake pad plant.

“We’re here because an injury to one is an injury to all,” UAW Local 5 President Joe Taylor told the rally. “This community has your back.” Local 5 members have helped walk the picket lines and have donated funds and goods to the food pantry.

Some $70,000 has been raised from collections in locals throughout Indiana and Ohio, UAW Region 2-B Director Ken Lortz told the rally.

A number of local and state politicians, including the mayor of South Bend, addressed the rally. So did Dan Fein, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from Illinois, who has walked the picket lines before.

“The fight at Honeywell is part of a bigger picture,” Fein said. “The capitalist system is in crisis all over the world, and the boss class tries to make workers pay for it. The capitalists have the economy and the government in their hands, but our strength comes from our numbers and solidarity.”

— Ilona Gersh

Alstom workers mobilize against closing train factory in France

SAINT-OUEN, France — Nearly 600 workers rallied outside the headquarters of Alstom Transport train division in this suburb of Paris Sept. 26. Most of the 480 workers from Alstom’s Belfort plant, near the Swiss border, came to protest the company’s recent announcement that it would close the plant, which makes the high-speed TGV train, and transfer 400 workers to its factory in Reichshoffen, 125 miles away. Workers on strike that day at other Alstom plants in France joined the rally.

The action, organized by four unions representing the plant’s workers, took place while union representatives met with management.

“They think they can control us by pressuring and scaring us because many of us have mortgages on our homes,” Laurent, a Belfort worker who is not a member of any of the unions, told the Militant. “These loans hold us back. But we need to continue to mobilize.”

During the rally workers passing by expressed their solidarity. Philippe Martinez, general secretary of the CGT, the largest French union, participated in the action.

The French government, which owns 20 percent of Alstom, announced Oct. 4 it would order 15 trains to forestall the closure of the 137-year-old plant.

— Claude Bleton

 
 
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